Pedophile who bound 7-year-old girl’s neck, hands and filmed brutal 40-minute rape in toilet sentenced to life
A 56-year-old pedophile, who bound and raped a seven-year-old girl in a toilet cubicle, received a life imprisonment sentence without parole on Tuesday. The man, identified as Anthony Sampieri, reportedly punched the child in the face before dragging her into a bathroom of a dance studio at knifepoint in Kogarah, southern Sydney, Australia in November 2018.
Sampieri reportedly wrapped a cord around her neck, and then brutally raped the little girl for 40 minutes. He also filmed the heinous attack. The 56-year-old bound the child's hands with a cord from his shorts and stuffed toilet paper in her mouth so she could not call out for help. However, when he left the bathroom, he was confronted by mechanic Nicola Gilio who was helping the girl's mother search for the seven-year-old. The child was found inside the toilet.
Gilio reportedly tackled him to the ground with the help of a dentist working in the same building. The duo restrained him until authorities arrived and arrested him. Officials saw Sampieri with his trousers down and covered in blood. He told officers that he was doing drugs when the pair came up to him and started attacking him. "I was shooting up and he's come in, beat me up and stolen my meth," he claimed.
Judge Paul Conlon, during the sentencing, said Sampieri exhibited a "complete lack of empathy for the child," adding that the assault was "any parent's worst nightmare," the Daily Mail reported.
"One can only imagine the confusion and heightened state of fear she would have been in as he subjected her to sexual abuse of the most horrifying and degrading kind," the judge continued, adding that the child may be terrified of bathrooms now, including the ones in her own home.
The rapist, in June last year, pleaded guilty to 10 charges linked to the dance hall attack, including three counts of sexual intercourse with a child under 10.
Reports state the assailant, at the time of the attack, was out on parole after being released from jail for raping a 60-year-old woman at her home in Wollongong in 2012. In the months before the attack on the child, he had made 94 sexually explicit calls to multiple women, including a 71-year-old community choir treasurer, a chaplain and 20 real estate agents.
Sampieri, who was recently diagnosed with liver cancer, only has a 60 percent chance of surviving the next five years, and may never be a free man again.